Organic food & education for families in Rio slum

Dear donors, 

We hope all of you are doing great. Here is what we have been working on since our last report in January:

Our most important news is that we have now completed Agrofavela’s course with our first pilot class of students in Vidigal. We have reached the end of the course with 20 students, out of the starting 78. Throughout this month, we will be conducting a post-course questionnaire to measure their performance, comparing their answers to the ones they gave at the beginning of the course. With such information, we will be able to generate our impact indicators and review how we can improve the teaching methodology and the course’s contents. Then, we will begin preparing for a second class and engaging possible partners to digitalize the course’s material and examine what paths we may take to escalate the course to other communities.

Upon the end of the Agrofavela course, we realized that the students who completed it are very engaged and feel like true wellness ambassadors in their community. We understand the importance of cultivating that energy and offering continuity for their ongoing growth. We still have not defined precisely how this will be done, but we believe that those people will be of great importance in the caring and development of the local gardens to be created in the future.

In addition to this, we are also working and investing a lot of our energies in scouting new members and volunteers to strengthen the project’s capacity. Besides structuring our team, processes and strategy for Agrofavela, we are talking to potential partners to take part in the next phase of the project, which will be centered on the development of local production from the Favela through the professionalization of the Sitiê Ecopark and the creation of new community gardens. 

We have distributed organic food baskets at the end of each module of the course to all families who have participated in Agrofavela’s first course.it. We are parallelly still distributing 200 emergency food kits per week through our partnership with Rio Against Corona and our local Vidigal Vive Collective. At this time, we lack more significant funding to manage to finance the distribution of the organic baskets on a larger scale and frequency.

We have been able to distribute these organic food baskets in Vidigal thanks to the help of our partners from Orgânico Solidário, which currently provides 10,000 organic baskets per week to over 80 favelas in three states of Brazil. So far, they have helped Favela Inc connect with their ecosystem to start distributing the baskets in Vidigal through our courses. We have shared information, knowledge, and good practices to develop a plan on how we will collaborate to create an ecosystem of health, local agriculture, and sustainable education within the favelas. We are now happy to announce that we agreed that AgroFavela will now officially be a joint project from Favela Inc and Orgânico Solidário. They will help us with the macro aspects of the project, such as finding partners, strategies, and funding, while we will be focusing on the local implementation of our programs, connecting with local families and organizations, and ensuring the alignment between the community’s needs and the project’s goals. Along with the strengthening of our partnership, our technology solution, Vision, will collaborate by helping to register the locals being assisted and the local organizations that make this happen.

The Sitiê Ecological park (one of our incubees) is temporarily going through a difficult time because we lack the human and financial resources to evolve the development of the Agroforest project. Meanwhile, the park is still being maintained and works as a public space by its founders and local volunteers. Favela Inc is still present in dialogue with the park’s administrators, and we are evaluating possible ways we can fund the structuring of the park to operate as an Agroforest. It will require an initial phase of organizational development and the formalization of legal documents. 

What we have accomplished this quarter:

• 20 students have completed the first edition of the Agrofavela course
• Students were very engaged in the course’s activities and are still spreading their learnings to other members of the community after the ending of the course
• 15 classes were offered in total, distributed between two groups of students. Each student watched 12 lessons to complete all contents addressed in the course
• We have funded the course and paid the teacher, Nayara, a resident of Vidigal, with the help of our donors
• We have purchased 150 organic baskets that have been distributed since January, thanks to your donations
• We have strengthened our partnership with Orgânico Solidário and agreed to have Agrofavela as a mutual project from both organizations
• We’ve been able to offer our students breakfast in all classes of the Agrofavela course, thanks to our donors. The breakfast usually included various fruits, toast and butter, coffee, juice, coconut water, granola and honey.
• We have purchased the necessary materials to create composters used in the course, as well as food items we used during classes to teach the students about nutrition, and materials to plant at the Sitiê Ecopark.

All of our accomplishments could not have been possible without the support of our incredible donors month by month. We thank all of you for trusting us to generate impact on the lives of the residents of Vidigal by donating to our projects on GlobalGiving. We will continue to send you updates through Reports and Appeals on GlobalGiving and by posting on our website, Instagram, and Facebook pages. Make sure you follow us to keep up with our news and activities! 

You can send us any questions, comments, and feedback by email at anabeatriz@favelainc.com. I look forward to hearing from you and connecting with our big family of supporters!

Keep safe, and we will be in touch again soon!

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